Hintze Centre for Astrophysical Surveys

Abstract:

We present ultradeep radio observations with the Expanded Very Large Array of 4U 1957+11, a Galactic black hole (BH) candidate X-ray binary known to exist in a persistent soft X-ray state. We derive a stringent upper limit of 11.4 μJy beam-1 (3σ) at 5-7 GHz, which provides the most rigorous upper limit to date on the presence of jets in a soft state BH X-ray binary (BHXB). X-ray, UV, and optical fluxes obtained within a few weeks of the radio data can be explained by thermal emission from the disk. At this X-ray luminosity, a hard state BHXB that follows the established empirical radio-X-ray correlation would be at least 330-810 times brighter at radio frequencies, depending on the distance to 4U 1957+11. This jet quenching of >2.5 orders of magnitude is greater than some models predict and implies that the jets are prevented from being launched altogether in the soft state. 4U 1957+11 is also more than one order of magnitude fainter than the faintest of the "radio-quiet" population of hard state BHs. In addition, we show that, on average, soft state stellar-mass BHs probably have fainter jets than most active galactic nuclei in a state equivalent to the soft state. These results have implications for the conditions required for powerful, relativistic jets to form and provide a new empirical constraint for time- and accretion mode-dependent jet models, furthering our understanding of jet production and accretion onto BHs. © 2011. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.

Abstract:

We present the results of a gravitational lensing analysis of the bright z s = 2.957 submillimeter galaxy (SMG) HERMES found in the Herschel/SPIRE science demonstration phase data from the Herschel Multi-tiered Extragalactic Survey (HerMES) project. The high-resolution imaging available in optical and near-IR channels, along with CO emission obtained with the Plateau de Bure Interferometer, allows us to precisely estimate the intrinsic source extension and hence estimate the total lensing magnification to be μ = 10.9 ± 0.7. We measure the half-light radius R eff of the source in the rest-frame near-UV and V bands that characterize the unobscured light coming from stars and find R eff, * = [2.0 ± 0.1] kpc, in good agreement with recent studies on the SMG population. This lens model is also used to estimate the size of the gas distribution (Reff, gas = [1.1 ± 0.5] kpc) by mapping back in the source plane the CO (J = 5 → 4) transition line emission. The lens modeling yields a relatively large Einstein radius R Ein = 4.″10 ± 0″.02, corresponding to a deflector velocity dispersion of [483 ± 16] km s -1. This shows that HERMES is lensed by a galaxy group-size dark matter halo at redshift z l ∼ 0.6. The projected dark matter contribution largely dominates the mass budget within the Einstein radius with f dm(< R Ein) ∼ 80%. This fraction reduces to f dm(< R eff, G1 ≃ 4.5 kpc) ∼ 47% within the effective radius of the main deflecting galaxy of stellar mass M *, G1 = [8.5 ± 1.6] × 1011 M ⊙. At this smaller scale the dark matter fraction is consistent with results already found for massive lensing ellipticals at z ∼ 0.2 from the Sloan Lens ACS Survey. © 2011. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.

Abstract:

We are at the dawn of a new golden age for radio astronomy, with a new generation of facilities under construction and the global community focused on the Square Kilometre Array as its goal for the next decade. These new facilities offer orders of magnitude improvements in survey speed compared to existing radio telescopes and arrays. Furthermore, the study of transient and variable radio sources, and what they can tell us about the extremes of astrophysics as well as the state of the diffuse intervening media, have been embraced as key science projects for these new facilities. In this paper we review the studies of the populations of radio transients made to date, largely based upon archival surveys. Many of these radio transients and variables have been found in the image plane, and their astrophysical origin remains unclear. We take this population and combine it with sensitivity estimates for the next generation arrays to demonstrate that in the coming decade we may find ourselves detecting 105 image plane radio transients per year, providing a vast and rich field of research and an almost limitless set of targets for multi-wavelength follow up.